


Atropos

by hioangeost



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fate, Horcruxes, I Don't Even Know, Mythology References, POV Tom Riddle, Smut, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:28:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 14,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hioangeost/pseuds/hioangeost
Summary: Tom is eleven the first time she visits him.She calls herself Persephone, but he knows that the name is a lie.She claims that she's come from hell to see him. Curiously, that is the truth.Whoever she is, and wherever she came from, Tom knows that she is special.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 68
Kudos: 329





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concept came to me and wouldn't leave me alone. If you're looking for comprehensive detail and logic concerning Horcrux theory and time travel, this isn't the place to look. If you enjoy tragedy and vengeance and mythological references, welcome. :) Fair warning that there are no happy endings here.
> 
> Usual disclaimers apply: I own nothing that you recognise, and all mistakes are mine (for some reason I switched tenses midway through...I've made corrections during a proofread, but have almost certainly missed some).

For as long as he can remember, Tom Riddle has been terribly frightened by the prospect of death.

It is a _rational_ fear, he supposes, in that death is absolutely certain. Death will destroy him one day, and it is perfectly reasonable to be worried by the prospect. On the other hand, it is an _irrational_ fear. Death is inevitable, and fretting about it will neither speed nor delay its arrival. Nonetheless, the fear of it has always loomed in the corners of his mind, like the little bit of rising damp that makes the paint twist and darken in the corners of his room.

He couldn’t say precisely _why_ he fears it. He knows his mother died shortly after he was born, but he certainly can’t _remember_ that. He assumes his father must also be dead, but he’s never met him either, so he can’t say for sure. People died every day, a great many of them of old age. Others died young, of course, or badly, but that was no certainty. There is every chance that Tom will live well into his dotage then die quietly in his sleep. That was what had happened to Eric Whalley’s grandmother (her death, mind you, had consigned Eric to Wool’s Orphanage, with Tom and the other unwanted children who had no surviving family to claim them). Still, nobody ever seemed troubled by it. Not _really_ , at least. They might cry, and speak softly, and attend funerals, and spend a time looking pale and sad and tearful, but they eventually moved on. It might take three weeks, or three months, or even longer, but it happened. They _forgot_ , or at any rate they forgot _most of the time_ , and only returned to their sad, pale state when someone reminded them of what they’d lost.

Tom _never_ wants to be forgotten so completely as that. The thought that he will one day stop being, and will slowly but entirely disappear, fills him with dread. He had seen a dead cat once, rotting away on the side of the road, teeming with maggots and missing its eyes, and had realised that there was an exact equivalence between your flesh and your memory. The flesh (usually) went into the ground, and gradually melted away. The weakest parts decomposed first, and it took time, but eventually even the bones collapsed into dust. The memory didn’t go into the ground, but it was confined to other people’s minds as surely as the body was sealed into a coffin. Like the flesh, the softest parts went first—the memory of someone’s face, perhaps, or their voice—but after long enough, the world forgot _everything_ , even your name.

Tom is determined that _his_ name will be remembered.


	2. Billy Stubbs

When Tom is eight years old, Billy Stubbs finds him talking with a little grass snake. Snakes aren’t common in London, and Tom has no idea how this one finds him, but he strokes it softly and listens to it as it whispers about mice and sun and dark, quiet places where it is safe to sleep. He tells it about his room, and that he has a box in his cupboard that is dark and quiet, and that it is welcome to live there, if it wants. He can take it outside each day for food, and will read to it, and it can have his spare blanket for warmth.

Billy Stubbs, the vicious little idiot, sees the snake wound around Tom’s wrist, and hears his quiet hissing, and goes _berserk_. He is the same age as Tom, but bigger and a lot heavier. He shouts that Tom is a freak, attracting the attention of all the other orphans, then rips the snake away. Ignoring Tom’s screams of fury and upset (and keeping him at bay with a hand on his forehead, preventing Tom’s skinny arms from making contact), he throws the snake to the concrete and stomps on its head. The snake dies immediately, its blood and flesh and scales forming an ugly pulp, vividly red against the grey concrete under the grey light from the grey sky. Tom eventually manages to bite Billy (he is soundly punished for it), but it doesn’t bring his snake back. Martha scoops the dead reptile up in a dustpan and discards it. Tom is horrified and frightened by how quickly it all happens: one minute, the snake is there, chattering on his wrist; the next, it is gone, save for the bloody smear on the ground.

Tom is also been angry and intrigued. If something can die so _quickly_ , he wonders whether it could also die _slowly_. When Billy Stubbs is in the kitchen, stuffing his stupid face, Tom goes and collects Billy’s rabbit from its hutch in the Orphanage yard. It looks at him with its dumb, shiny eyes and its fluffy white fur, but it doesn’t _do_ anything. It doesn’t _talk_ like his snake had talked.

Tom strings it up from a rafter and watches it struggle. It squeaks and chokes and kicks at the air with its useless big feet. It takes minutes, in the end— _much_ longer than Tom’s snake—but it does die. When Billy sees it hanging there lifelessly, he screams and screams. Mrs Cole and Billy obviously both suspect Tom was the one to do it, but they can’t _prove_ it, so he isn’t even punished for it.


	3. Persephone

Tom is eleven when she visits him for the first time.

He walks into his room one evening, and she is there, perched on the sill and looking out at the dreary London view. It is Spring (the fourth of May, to be exact), but it is still grey and raining. She is older than Tom, but not old; not quite what he would regard as an adult, but too grown to be considered a child.

“Who are you?” he asks sharply. Tom’s room is _his_ , and _only_ his. He hates it when other people enter without his permission.

“Today?” she asks, and he thinks that is an odd sort of response. He is _always_ Tom—the day has nothing to do with it. “Today, I’m Persephone.”

“No, you’re not.” Tom has read _Greek Myths for Children_ , one of the tattered little volumes in the Orphanage playroom. He _knows_ who Persephone is, and that she isn’t real, and that even if she was, she is not the girl in front of him. “Persephone was beautiful.”

The girl-woman on the windowsill raises her eyebrows at him, and Tom thinks, belatedly, that he’s been rather rude. “And you don’t think _I’m_ beautiful?”

“No.” Tom replies, politely but frankly. It is true—she is terribly skinny (even skinnier than Tom himself), and he can see a big scar on her arm. Her eyes are sunken, surrounded by dark circles worse than Mrs Cole’s, and she has wild, curly hair that looks as if it has never been combed. She doesn’t seem overly insulted by his honesty, though. In fact, she looks almost as if she thinks he is _funny_ (a look that people very rarely direct at Tom).

“Nonetheless, Tom Riddle, I _am_ Persephone today. I’m the Queen of the Dead, and I’ve come all the way from Hades to speak with you.”

“How do you know my name?” he demands.

“I know more than that, Tom. I know about your dead mother, and I know about your father, and I know that you were born here at Wool’s in 1926.”

“Mrs Cole could have told you those things.” Tom replies confidently. Mrs Cole had threatened to send him to an asylum, following the incident with Amy Benson and Dennis Bishop, and he wonders whether this stranger mightn’t be _from_ the Asylum, sent to convince him that he is mad. “Tell me something that she _doesn’t_ know.”

“I know that you can talk to snakes.” the not-Persephone replies. Tom pauses to consider that for a moment. While he doesn’t _think_ Mrs Cole knows about the snakes, he supposes there is always a chance she might have guessed. “And I know that you’re,” Persephone pauses, “ _special_.”

 _That_ gets Tom’s attention. She is right—he is special—but there is something nasty in her smile as she says it, something that makes him think she would love to strangle everything that makes him special, the same way he’d tortured the nastiness right out of Amy and Dennis.

“How do you know?” he asks, using the special voice that _makes_ people answer, even when they don’t want to.

“I just do.” she replies, unaffected, and he squeezes his fists with frustration.

“Alright, then,” he says slyly, “if you know so much, tell me what it was like where you came from?” Tom knows about Hades. He has been dragged to church on more than one occasion, with all the other orphans, and knows about hell too: a pit full of fire, where you were punished for the bad things you’d done. Tom doesn’t believe in hell _or_ heaven, or Hades, or whatever else it might have been called.

Persephone looks at him like he is a tangled piece of string that she is thinking of unknotting.

“A castle—a grand castle, with suits of armour and stained glass windows and cosy turrets and huge kitchens. A place that was beautiful and wonderful, once, but isn’t any more. The windows were smashed, and the hallways were collapsed. The books were burnt and the kitchens are cold and empty. Teeming with monsters: giants, and wolves, and dead bodies that walk, and spiders the size of horses or even bigger. Creatures in silver masks and black cloaks running around, hurting and tormenting anyone they come across. Over it all, a pale demon of a man, with red eyes and no soul.”

Tom gawks at her in open-mouthed astonishment and a little bit of fear. She has a dead look in her eyes, a bit like Billy’s rabbit, and they are fixed on him flatly. Tom always, _always_ knows when a person is lying, and he knows that, unbelievable as it seems, she is telling the truth.

“Why have you come to see me?” if she notices that he has grown more respectful, she doesn’t comment.

“I wanted to see what you were like.” she replies, sounding almost sad. “I also wanted to tell you one more thing—something special, like you.”

“What is it?” Tom asks, unable to hide his eagerness.

“Three months from now, a man in a purple suit will come to see you. His name is Albus Dumbledore.”

“That’s an odd name.” he says.

“It is,” she agrees, “but you’ll find he’s an odd man. There a reason for it, though. Albus Dumbledore is a wizard, and so are you. That’s what he’s coming to tell you.”

“A _wizard_?” Tom replies incredulously, hope and distrust all mixed together inside him. “What does that mean? That there are others like me?”

“I suppose you’ll have to find out.” she says, standing up as though she is preparing to leave. He takes a step towards her—she can’t _go_ , not when there is so much he wants to _know_ —but she clicks her tongue in disapproval and shakes her head at him.

“Don’t leave!” Tom senses that he sounds desperate, the way Eric had sounded when they’d first delivered him to Wool’s, when the custody officer had passed him off to Martha.

“Remember, Tom Riddle,” she tells him sternly, “you might be able make the others do your bidding,” he understands that she means Amy and Dennis and the rest, even if she doesn’t say the words, “but _I_ am beyond your command.”

Tom reaches out, helplessly, urgently, hoping to somehow convince her to stay. She looks at him for a moment, with that sad expression again. Then she vanishes.

He stands there, stunned into silence, and stares at the space where she had been. There is no way she could have jumped from the window, or left through the door. He checks under the bed and in the wardrobe, in case she has somehow hidden from him, even though he doesn’t really believe it. She has simply _disappeared_.

Everything Persephone tells him is true: Albus Dumbledore comes to see Tom three months later, and to invite him to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

He tells Dumbledore about the snakes, but he never mentions Persephone.


	4. Clotho

Tom is thirteen the next time she comes to see him. He is at Wool’s, again, following his second year at school. He hates returning to muggle London over the holidays, but Headmaster Dippett insists that he can’t stay at Hogwarts.

The days are long and bleak and impossibly empty, with few books (he re-reads his textbooks, but they can only keep him entertained for so long) and no magic. He no longer bothers interacting with the other orphans, and has realised that muggles are dull and stupid and ordinary. The grey, hungry world of Wool’s is _nothing_ like the glittering, magical reality of Hogwarts.

He is reading _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two_ for the ninth time when he looks up to see her sitting on his windowsill, just as she had been that day more than two years earlier. His heart thumps unevenly in his chest. It has been so long that he has, in his darker moments, wondered whether he had imagined her, whether he really _had_ been going mad. There had been no tangible evidence of her ever being there, and she had never come back. The only consolation has been the information about Dumbledore. While Tom has toyed with the idea that it might have been some sort of magical premonition—he knows about Seers now—there is really no way that he might have known about Dumbledore or the magical world (both far beyond his frame of reference at the time), let alone the date and the detail about the purple suit. Someone had to have told him, even if it was in some strange dreamscape, and he chooses to believe that it was her.

“Persephone!” the word is soft, as if he thinks that just saying it aloud might cause her to disappear. She raises her head to look at him, quirking her eyebrows in just the same way as she had before. She looks a lot better than the last time he’d seen her: cleaner, better-rested. He notices her eyes are a bright, golden brown.

“I’m not Persephone today, Tom.”

“What may I call you, then?” Tom has learnt a few things since he’s last seen her, and the benefits of being unfailingly polite and charming (on the outside, at least) are some of them. The corner of her mouth twitches into a smile.

“Clotho.”

Tom hasn’t heard of Clotho, but he doesn’t give the matter a lot of thought—he is far more interested in what is in her _hands_.

Clotho, or whatever she is called, is weaving something. She isn’t using needles, though, or a spinning wheel: only her fingers. The substance is lighter and airier than any thread Tom has ever seen. Too diffuse to be a liquid, too tangible to be a gas, but it doesn’t look solid either. It swirls through the air in a way that is rather uncanny, coiling and disintegrating and coalescing independent of any external factor that he can sense. She is pulling the strange, insubstantial ribbons from the air with the tip of her finger, twisting them until they resemble glittering strands of spider-silk, then twining the separate strands together into a dazzling cord that slips through her hands like quicksilver. While Tom has never had any interest in women’s work before, he cannot help but be utterly riveted.

“What are you weaving?” he asks, unable to restrain his curiosity.

“A thread.” she replies simply, not even looking up from her work.

“But this,” Tom pauses, seeking the right word, “ _material_? What is it?”

Clotho stops at that, passing the silver cord idly through her fingers as she looks at him in a penetrating, assessing way. “They’re memories.” she eventually replies.

“ _Memories_?” the concept is fascinating. “Like the ones you’d put in a Pensieve?”

“Exactly like that.” she smiles (just a tiny movement at the corner of her mouth) and Tom feels a strange surge of pride, as if he’s answered a question correctly in class.

“Are they yours?” he draws slightly closer, wanting to be near them, though he could scarcely say why.

“Some of them.” she says.

“And the others?”

“Oh, they came from all sorts of people. Some came from a very good friend of mine.” Tom feels a twinge of something resembling anger at the thought that she shares herself with other people—he has, for some reason, imagined that she is _his_. Her aureate eyes lock onto his face. “That makes you jealous? To think of my seeing people who aren’t you?”

“Of course not.” he replies quickly and untruthfully.

“Don’t lie to me, Tom.” it is _very_ rare for Tom to be caught out in the midst of a deception, and he doesn’t like the feeling at all.

“You said you came to see _me_.”

“And that’s the truth. I’m here for _you_ , Tom, and _only_ you.” it is true; there is no shadow of uncertainty about the words. He feels slightly soothed by the assurance.

“I’m important, then?” she laughs coldly at the question.

“You certainly are.”

Tom doesn’t have friends, even at Hogwarts. People like Lestrange and Nott and Rosier are _useful_ , in an everyday way, but they don’t _know_ anything. Not like Clotho. He thinks that perhaps she is his friend. She is certainly more interesting than anyone else he knows.

“Where do you go, when you’re not here? Back to-” not Hades “-wherever it is you came from?”

“No. Never there. I don’t want to go back; not yet. If you’d been there, you’d understand.”

“So you just…wait for me?” she snorts, the least dignified noise he’s heard her make.

“You’re not _that_ important. I have a great many things to do _besides_ seeing you.”

“Are you a sort of,” Tom struggles, “guardian angel?” he doesn’t believe in them, obviously, but it is difficult to frame his thoughts in any other way.

“No.” he waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn’t.

“A conscience, then?” she actually laughs, that time.

“Do you feel you need one, Tom?” he feels a little prickle of heat at the back of his neck, like he might have given himself away.

“That wasn’t a no.”

“No, I’m definitely not your conscience.”

“Why did it take you so long to come back?” Tom is distantly aware that he has come close to the heart of his concerns—he doesn’t like that she has stayed away from him for so long, long enough that he thought he’d invented her.

“I’m working on a difficult project. It takes a lot of time.” her mouth curves into something that is… _wry_ , if not actually entertained.

“ _Two years_?”

“Much, much longer. I started it before I met you, and I won’t complete it for years. One day you’ll have something important to do that will demand all of your time and thought, and you’ll understand.”

“I could help you.” he offers, suddenly, _wanting_ to understand.

“You already have.” she tells him, and slips off the sill, preparing to leave. Disapparition, he now realises, is how she’d done it before.

“Are you leaving?” he is seized by the wish that she wouldn’t.

“Yes.”

“Will you give me something?” he blurts out, desperate for evidence that might endure beyond her presence. “Something so that I _know_ you were here?”

Her gaze is calculating.

“Not today, Tom. I’ve nothing for you to add to your collection of little… _trophies_.” she looks meaningfully at the cupboard, where his box of stolen items had once resided. He’d returned them, obviously, when Dumbledore had demanded it, but she still knows. “I’ll bring you something next time.”

“How long will that be?” he knows he sounds petulant, but he is too frustrated to care.

“I suppose we’ll see.” she tells him firmly, making it clear that she won’t commit to a particular date. She wraps the silver cord around her arms in preparation for her departure.

“Wait!” he says, but she is already gone.


	5. Eris

He is delighted when she reappears before the end of the holidays. He is nearly ready to return to Hogwarts, and is just returning to his room with some freshly laundered shirts when he sees her there, scrutinising the contents of his almost-packed trunk.

“Divination, Tom? Really?” she has his new Divination textbook in her hand, but drops it back into the trunk in obvious disgust.

“You don’t like Divination?”

“Divination is a ludicrous discipline that no worthwhile wizard would waste his time pursuing.” she snaps back. “Pure hokum.” Tom hasn't seen her… _agitated_ , or indeed demonstrating any particular emotion or proclivity towards or away from anything. It is both thrilling and unsettling.

“ _You_ seem know an awful lot about the future, though.” he comments, wondering if he might be able to trick her into revealing something else. “I thought you might have been a Seer.”

“I _do_ know an awful lot about your future, Tom, and I’ve no intention of sharing any of it with you.” she replies sniffily. “What I do know, however, _certainly_ wasn’t discerned through methods as imprecise and unreliable as Divination.”

“How, then?” she gives him a baleful glare, but (unsurprisingly) doesn’t furnish him with any further information.

“At any rate, I didn’t come here to critique your appalling taste in electives.” Tom bristles a bit at that, but he is curious as to why she _has_ come. “I came to give you something.”

Something in his chest lights up at the notion: she _has_ come back, and she has brought him something, just as he has hoped. He can take it to Hogwarts with him, and he’ll know, every time he looks at it, that she is real.

She extends something on her palm: a little brass bookmark in the shape of an apple. Tom looks at it in amusement.

“Are you Eve, today, then?”

The smile she gives him is the widest, most genuine one he’s ever seen from her. She has perfect teeth—straight and white and even—and the expression illuminates her pale, heart-shaped face.

“Not Eve, Tom. Eris.”

“Eris, then.” he grants, taking the bookmark from her hand and sliding it into his Divination textbook in the vague hope of annoying her.

“What present did you plan to give _me_?” she asks, taking him aback a bit with her boldness. It isn’t that he didn’t think of her when he was in Diagon Alley—he did, constantly—but rather more practical considerations. Firstly, what did one buy a woman who claimed to have been loosed from the underworld? Secondly, Tom’s school necessities are paid for by Hogwarts, and he has no money of his own that he can spend on trinkets. She chuckles at him. “Don’t look so alarmed. I was joking; I don’t expect you to spend your few spare knuts on me.”

“I want to give you something, though,” he says, almost surprising himself with the sentiment, “so that you remember me when you’re away, working on your project.”

“So that I remember to come back, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You _have_ nothing to give me, Tom.” her assertion stings, mostly because it is true. Tom _doesn’t_ have much in the way of possessions, and he can hardly give her something he’s stolen. He pauses, anxiously, performing a silent inventory of the things he owns. School books, mostly, and uniforms. “Tell you what,” Eris says, apparently taking pity on him, “how about you give me one of your hairs. I can carry that easily, and it will be like having a little part of you with me wherever I go.”

Tom pulls one of the short, pitch-black hairs from his scalp and extends it towards her. It is hardly a proper gift, as far as such things go, but it is something that is absolutely, unequivocally _his_ , and something which they both know he can afford. She accepts it as graciously as if it is made of solid gold, holding it delicately between her fingers.

“You’ll think of me, now?” he asks, feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.

“I always do.” she says, absolute honesty ringing through the words. Tom feels a little surge of relief.

Pausing briefly to give his Divination book one last, nasty glance, Eris takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and disapparates away.


	6. Lachesis

The next time Tom sees her, it is his fourteenth birthday. It’s the Christmas holiday at Hogwarts, and almost all his classmates have gone home for the break. He has the dormitory all to himself, the Common Room _almost_ all to himself, and even meals are held at a single, communal table. The Professors are still around, and the Ghosts, but it largely feels as if he’s alone in the castle. He relishes the sensation.

It’s the last day of the year, only minutes until 1940 will tick into 1941. He is on the Astronomy tower, even though he shouldn’t be. It’s hours after curfew (which is relaxed during the holidays), but he doubts any of the Professors would discipline him for being out so late. Not on his birthday; not when they’re all so sympathetic to poor, clever, orphaned Tom Riddle. Dumbledore, naturally, remains the exception. He has never liked Tom, not since that first visit at Wool’s.

Unsurprisingly, given the time of the year and the location of the castle, it’s snowing. The flakes are white and crisp as they swirl around him, illuminating the darkness. He can see the white ground seemingly miles below, and the little rectangles of gold light from the castle windows reflected in the freshly-fallen snow. The Forbidden Forest still looks dark and deep, but even the huge, black trees glitter with a bit of snowfall. The lake is frozen about the edges, and the Giant Squid hasn’t been seen for weeks. It always moves deeper during the winter, to where the water temperature is more stable.

She is so still, and so silent, that he doesn’t actually know _when_ she appears, or how long she might have been there, watching him. Nonetheless, he’s pleased to see her.

“Happy Birthday, Tom.” she has her weaving again, he notices. The cord is longer than the last time he saw it, and is looped carefully around her wrist. She’s not actually weaving, though: she is _measuring_. A magical tape, somewhat similar to the ones that they use at Madam Melisende’s in Diagon Alley, hovers in the air before her. It’s jet black, almost as if it’s woven from pure night, and the markings flash silver-gold in the moonlight. They’re too small for Tom to read.

“I’d thank you,” he says, “but I don’t know what to call you.”

She looks up at him, her eyes practically glowing in the snow-filled darkness. The snow and the moonlight have drained her of her usual colour, making her face a stark landscape of blacks and whites. Her skin is like pearl, and the shadows across it are as dark as ink. Her eyes are huge and dusky, the gold largely stripped away by the cold light, and her normally brown curls are darkened to a shadowy cascade that emphasises the white slenderness of her neck and the fragility of her narrow shoulders. She is wearing what she always wears—a simple white dress, in a Grecian style to match her conceit— and he wonders why her teeth aren’t chattering. The air is _bitter_.

“You can call me Lachesis.” she informs him. Her tape measure undulates beside her like an eyeless serpent.

“Lachesis.” Tom tastes the word, savouring it more slowly than he has ever done in the past. He’d read up on Clotho after one of her earlier visits, and he knows that Clotho and Lachesis are two of the Fates. Clotho spins the thread of life, and Lachesis measures it. He’s amused by the notion, as he remembers her weaving very well, and can clearly perceive the tape at her side. “Very nice.”

She smiles at him, teeth gleaming in the argent ambience, and snaps her fingers. The silver cord winds itself snugly about one of her arms, the black tape around the other. He is reminded, powerfully, of the way that Cleopatra is often depicted, with the asp coiled around her arm and prepared to sting.

The castle’s huge clock chimes, ringing in the New Year and the end of Tom’s birthday. A sudden anguish, a moment of existential terror, dances past him as quickly as the cavorting snowflakes.

“You knew, before, what was going to happen to me. Do you still know?”

“I do.”

“Tell me something.” that little edge of command has crept back into Tom’s voice without his conscious permission, and she gives him an unimpressed look.

“Ask me nicely.”

He takes a moment to compose himself, struggling not to grind his teeth. “Would you _please_ tell me something?”

“I will, _if_ you let me take a few measurements.” the viperine tape sits up at one end, as if it’s inspecting him. Tom wonders why she wants his measurements, but despite its apparent sentience, he doesn’t think the tape will harm him. It’s sitting quietly enough on _her_ arm, so he allows it.

The tape swirls through the air, pausing around Tom’s forehead, his waist, his chest, and his throat (a moment which makes him slightly nervous, despite himself). It measures the distance between his eyes, his height from top to bottom, the circumference of his middle fingers, and the length of the life line on his palm. It also measures (approximately, from _outside_ his trousers), the length of his cock, which brings a bit of heat to his neck and ears. Lachesis seems entirely unmoved by the spectacle, though, merely looking out over the forest as the tape does its work. When it finishes, it rolls itself into a tight coil and puffs out of existence, leaving a wisp of black that quickly dissipates into the night.

“You’re going about your search for your family history all wrong.” she informs him, and he’s struck, again, by the wonder of how she _knows_ these things. “Your mother wasn’t a muggle, she was a witch. It was your father who was the muggle. His name’s Tom Riddle, which you already knew, and he’s alive.”

Tom’s mouth falls open in shock and urgency, and he is about to demand that she tell him _more_ , that she _answer his questions_ , when she twists into nothingness.


	7. Hecate

It is _ages_ , almost a year, before she visits him again. He has finished his third year and started his fourth. He has spent the dreadful summer months loitering in his room at Wool’s, hoping desperately that she might appear. He is fucking _angry_ that she hasn’t.

It’s a Hogsmeade weekend in early December, and Tom is at Tomes and Scrolls, perusing books that he can’t afford (although Lestrange will give him the money, if he can smother his pride enough to ask for it). He’s at the back of the basement, in the Dark Arts section, indulging his growing fascination. Ever since he read about unicorn blood and its capacity to keep a person alive, he has been intrigued by the possibility that there might be _other_ ways to extend life. He’s asked different professors, but none of them know of anything beyond the unicorns. He knows that unicorn blood only grants you a cursed, diminished form of life, which doesn’t interest him, but the _possibility_ of eternal life is a consuming one.

He has researched and researched his family, following what _she_ told him, and he has made headway. Though he’s not made much progress towards finding his muggle father—the muggle father who left Tom to rot at Wool’s, and for whom he feels a dangerous lack of filial affection—he has traced his mother’s family. She was a _Gaunt_ , a Pureblood, descended from Salazar Slytherin himself. The thought has instilled Tom with a degree of pride which he’s never possessed before—pride that he didn’t have to _earn_ , pride that is simply a result of what he _is_ —and has bought him a certain cachet amongst his dorm-mates. Naturally, they are all sworn to secrecy. This is _Tom_ ’s family, _Tom_ ’s legacy, and he will determine who is and isn’t privy to the information.

He has just put another useless book carefully back onto the shelf (no matter how useless they might be, he can’t quite bring himself to disrespect them by treating them roughly—books are like physical embodiments of knowledge, and therefore sacred) when a slender, feminine hand plucks the next volume from the shelf. Tom, who hasn’t heard anyone approach, whips around guiltily, worried that he might have been caught (in the Dark Arts section) by a schoolmate.

She is standing there, glaring at him accusingly—as if _she_ has any right to be cross with _him_ —and Tom realises that he has grown taller than her.

“Tom Riddle,” she sounds almost scornful, “or are you going by _Gaunt_ , now?”

“It’s still Riddle.” he tells her, quietly but sharply. “My mother, despite her bloodline, was weak and worthless, or she’d have been able to save herself. When I fashion myself a new name, it won’t be Gaunt. What are _you_ going by, now?”

“Hecate.” she hisses, shoving the text she’s holding back onto the shelf. The cover crumples slightly, and he sees her wince as she pulls it back, smoothing it out anxiously before placing it much more carefully. It seems she, too, respects books.

“Goddess of boundaries and crossroads,” he snorts, “how apposite.”

“That’s a big word.” she says scornfully. “Then again, you have grown. Last time I saw you, you were still saying _please_ and _thank you_ and sucking your thumb-” Tom’s hand smacks down on the shelf before them, and he grips the wood so hard his knuckles whiten. Part of him desperately wants to hit her or hex her, but he’s worried that, if he does, she’ll _never_ come back. She takes a deep breath, as if she, too, is composing herself. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you.” it’s not actually a question, and Tom can hear the bitterness in his words.

“Yes. It wasn’t my intention to leave you for so long, but I…I had urgent work to do.”

“Your _project_.” he sounds so pathetically fucking whiny that he could cheerfully hit or hex _himself_.

“Yes, my project. I just,” she pauses, “lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

Tom feels ever so slightly soothed by the sincerity behind her apology. “That’s quite alright.” he eventually tells her. His voice has broken since he last saw her, and he’s been cultivating the new, deeper tone. Initially it had cracked often, but now he can keep it low and velvety all the time and at any volume. He’s noticed that the girls at Hogwarts seem to like it, and he wonders if Hecate will too.

“Don’t give me that.” she narrows her eyes at him warningly, and he feels rather like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

He glances at the dainty hand that rests on the shelf alongside his. Her wrists are tiny and delicate, like the legs of a bird, and her fingers are thin, the nails slightly almond-shaped. He looks back to her face.

“Sorry.” he says, unrepentant. Her answering glare is flat and unamused, and makes him chuckle softly in the back of this throat.

“You’re making a mistake, Tom, with all this time spent thinking about immortality.” she says, her expression and voice heartbreakingly earnest.

“That’s easy for you to say.” he mutters back resentfully, “You’re a goddess, or a demon, or something else eternal. Do you think I haven’t noticed that you never age? You _never_ change, whereas I’m getting older every year—closer to death every year—so don’t stand there and lecture _me_ about the pursuit of immortality.”

There is a tense silence.

“Although I do note,” he says, slowly, with dawning awareness, “that you said I’m _making a mistake_ , not _wasting my time_. That, in and of itself, tells me a great deal. There _is_ a way.”

“You’re overthinking,” she replies quickly, “I didn’t even imply that.”

“Oh, but you did.”

“Tom-”

“You know, don’t you? You know that I’m going to succeed; that I’m going to live forever?”

“I know _everything_ about you, you miserable wretch.” she snarls the words, and he has never seen or heard her so obviously angry. Her temper brings her to life, brings a delicate flush to her cheeks that he has never witnessed before. For the first time in their association, he idly wonders what she looks like beneath her white dress. “I know when you were born, I know what you’ve done, and I know what you think you’re going to do. You know what else I know?” she practically spits the words.

“What?” Tom breathes back, close to her face. Deliberately, taking advantage of her obvious distraction, he extends his pinkie finger and allows it to brush against hers where their respective digits rest against the shelf. She wrenches her hand away forcefully.

“I know _precisely_ when you’re going to die.” the words are spoken so softly that he wonders, for the briefest instant, if he might have misheard. “So you _are_ wasting your time, Tom Riddle.”

“When?” she shows no signs of leaving, so he thinks it’s safe to press. His hand is resting on a book, and he realises that he’s pushing so hard he’s actually torn the paper of the dustjacket.

“I hope you’re planning to pay for that.” she scolds him, looking suddenly like a bossy schoolmarm. He ignores her.

“ _When_ , Hecate?”

“ _That_ ,” she says, a violent light in her eyes, “would be telling.”

He senses it a moment before it happens, and reaches for her, even though he knows that seizing her won’t make her stay. At any rate, he’s too slow. She’s gone before his arms slice helplessly through the air where her waist had been.


	8. Nemesis

Tom knows she is angry with him when she punishes him with her absence. He doesn’t see her for a year and a half, though he has no way of guaranteeing that she hasn’t seen _him_ in that time. He knows more about himself than ever before. He is living his legacy as the Heir of Slytherin, has found the Chamber of Secrets that his ancestor left for him, and met the Basilisk that is his inheritance. He has Hogwarts under a veil of terror: students literally and figuratively petrified, staff stressed, parents anxious, board of Governors asking questions. This night, he has taken things further than ever before. Myrtle Warren, a dull, mopey third-year Ravenclaw mudblood, lies dead on the bathroom floor.

Tom is in the Chamber of Secrets, pondering his next move, when _she_ comes to him.

“What have you done?” she stands there in the centre of the Chamber, Slytherin’s immense stone figure behind her.

“Fulfilled my birthright,” he tells her coldly, “and summoned you to me in the same breath.”

“I’m not here for _you_ ,” she has never spoken to him so dismissively, that he can recall, and he doesn’t care for it, “I’m here for _Myrtle_.”

“She was nothing.”

“She was everything, Tom. You’re just too much of a fool to see it.”

Tom is sixteen, now, and more aware of his body than he has ever been before. He refuses to entertain any of the girls at Hogwarts, and his followers have assumed that he simply has little to no interest in sex. It’s a convenient wrong impression, so he doesn’t bother to correct them, but the truth is that he just has no interest in sex with anyone who isn’t _her_.

The incident with Warren has left him unusually excited, and he knows that he’s at least half-hard. The arousal is nothing to do with the girl herself (drab little thing, like a sad doll made of dough), but is intimately bound up with the actual _deed_. It’s like Billy Stubbs’ rabbit all over again, but on a much grander, more splendid scale. Tom only wishes he could have made it last longer. He has never felt more powerful, has never _been_ more powerful, and he wonders if she can sense it too. In the past, she has approached him at Wool’s, on the Astronomy Tower, and at Hogsmeade. Two of those are neutral ground, and he’d only been a child when she’d come to him at Wool’s. The Chamber is different, though. It’s _his_ space and _his_ inheritance. Here, Tom is King.

He is terribly annoyed with her, partly for her attempts to chastise him, partly because she stayed away for so long. A demonstration of his power seems appropriate: something to remind her that she’s dealing with a man and a wizard far beyond the mundane; someone special, as she is special. Tom hisses lowly, and his basilisk hisses back from the tunnels that surround the chamber.

He is properly irked when she just rolls her eyes. The basilisk coils slowly into the chamber (her eyes closed, at Tom’s request), and piles herself into a magnificent heap, scales shining dully in the half-light. Tom turns to the woman beside him.

“She could kill you with a glance, you know. She only answers to me. A word—a hiss, really—and you’d be as dead as poor, boring Myrtle.”

His goddess steps closer. Her eyes are rather basilisk-like themselves, gold and dangerous and unflinching.

“Do it, then.” she hisses. It’s certainly not the response that Tom’s expecting.

“You should be frightened.” he reminds her. She laughs at him nastily.

“You know the truth when you hear it, Tom, so hear this one: I’ve _seen_ the eyes of a live basilisk before, _and_ I lived to talk about it. Your overgrown earthworm is impressive, but she doesn’t scare me, and neither do you.”

Tom hopes it’s not obvious that his hands are trembling. She is, unfortunately, telling the truth, and he is both aghast (that he can’t even intimidate her with _this_ ) and awed.

“Who are you?” he murmurs, so overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is reduced to the most basic questions, the core curiosities that have kept him entertained (on a daily basis) for years.

“Nemesis, Goddess of Retribution.” she says, and Tom gives a huff of icy not-quite-amusement. She glances about the Chamber, instinctively knowing where to look, almost as if she’s been here before. Her gaze settles on the snoozing basilisk. “Does _she_ have a name?” Nemesis asks, indicating the serpent with a jerk of her head. “Or is such silly sentimentality beneath you?”

“Of course she has a name.” Tom says shortly, and lets out a complicated hiss. It’s an unsurprising fact that Parseltongue doesn’t really translate easily to English. “Outside of when we’re speaking Parseltongue, though, I call her Persephone.”

That gets Nemesis’ attention: she freezes where she is, turning her head slightly so that her sideways regard rests on Tom. “Persephone. Interesting choice.”

“It means _Bringer of Destruction_.”

“I know what it means.” Tom feels foolish for even mentioning it: of course she knows. There is another silence, and he fancies that Nemesis is trying to reign in her temper. “What will you do with Myrtle’s death?” she eventually asks, and Tom gathers a great deal from the question. It’s not a matter of _disposal_ , not a ‘what will you do with Myrtle’s body’, but a question of _purpose_. She _knows_ what he intends to do, now that he has a murder to his credit, and she wants to hear him say the word.

“You already know the answer to that.” he replies blandly. “As you’re always reminding me, you know everything.”

“Don’t do it, Tom. You’ll regret it, if you do.”

Tom laughs, genuinely this time. “No, I won’t. Remorse is counterproductive, it risks _un_ doing the whole process, which you undoubtedly realise.”

“Remorse and regret aren’t the same thing. Remorse requires empathy, so you’re safe.”

“You told me it couldn’t be done. Immortality.”

“I never told you anything of the sort. I said you were making a mistake pursuing it.”

“Well, you were wrong. After tonight, I’ll be tethered to life, the same way that I suspect _you_ are. I’ll live forever.”

“Will that make you happy, do you suppose?”

“Of course it will.” Tom replies with absolute certainty. “There are only two things I’ve ever, truly wanted. The first is eternal life. The second, as I’m sure you know, is you.”

“How fortunate that I can deny you at least one of those.” her response is biting, but Tom thinks he might have surprised her. There is something in her gaze which could almost be fear.

“Why would you, though?” he breathes. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he can sense that he is somehow closer to his second objective than he had anticipated.

“Any number of reasons, Tom: selfishness, desire to punish you, arrogance, sheer bloody spite. Then again, I could oblige you. Would you like that?”

“Yes.” he swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. Nemesis crooks a finger, beckoning him closer, and he cannot remember the last time he rushed so eagerly to do someone else’s bidding. He is immediately before her within seconds.

Tom’s heart, such as it is, almost stops beating when she kisses him. Excepting that one, tiny brush of their fingers in Tomes and Scrolls, they have never actually _touched_ before, and this is on an entirely different scale.

Tom has never kissed nor _been_ kissed, and he doesn’t really know what to do. He intuitively comprehends, though, that she is good at this. Her delicate hands are cradling his face as her lips trace his, even though his own hands are hovering helplessly somewhere in the region of her waist. Her body is pressed lightly against his front, and the softness of her breasts flattened against his chest is almost a direct counterpoint to the hardness in his trousers, which is pushing unforgivingly into her lower abdomen. One of her hands moves to the side of his head, her fingernail scraping feather-light across the shell of his ear as she parts her lips and allows him to feel her tongue. He shudders wildly and lets out an undignified groan, opening his mouth to her, tasting her tongue against his. It is hot and heady and bewitching, and he _knows_ that he is right to think that, for him, there is only her.

Then she bites his bottom lip, savagely hard.

Tom recoils with a half-cry of pain, his nerve endings thrilling under the tangled onslaught of contradictory sensations. She looks at him smugly. While he is confused, and furious, and aroused almost beyond description, he makes no move to retreat when she reaches for him. She cups his chin briefly in her hand and drags her thumb across his lower lip. The contact stings, and when she withdraws, he sees his blood gleaming on her thumb.

“Retribution, Tom, is a little like that. You can be confident in your power and your triumph and your glory, but one day it will just _happen_ , sharp and painful. It’s too late to undo Myrtle’s death, but it’s not too late to stop. You don’t have to make use of her the way you plan to. You don’t have to frame poor, innocent Hagrid and his baby Acromantula. There’ll be consequences, one day.”

Tom licks his lower lip, tasting the blood. “I suppose it’s just as well, then, that you’ll be around when the time comes to punish me.”

She steps back from him at that, and she looks so disgusted and disappointed that it causes an uncomfortable twinge in Tom’s chest. Still, it changes nothing. Death is a fate Tom will be avoiding, regardless of her thoughts on the matter.

“I suppose it is.” she says, and she is gone.


	9. Tisiphone

It isn’t long before she returns, and Tom is almost expecting it when she does. He has murdered his father and his muggle grandparents, then framed his ghastly uncle for the crime, and he feels sure she’ll appear to pass comment. Killing his father is the most satisfying thing Tom has ever done. A man, it turns out, can last much, _much_ longer tha a rabbit. He hasn’t used his father’s death for a second Horcrux yet—he has some questions for Slughorn, before he proceeds with more than one Horcrux—but he’s confident that, Horcrux or no, she won’t be impressed with him. He rather hopes she might appear immediately, or at least during the holidays, but she waits until he’s back at Hogwarts.

It is very late (or very early) when she appears. Tom is sitting in the Slytherin Common Room, slouching in one of the good leather armchairs and gazing into the green flames of the fireplace, when he becomes aware of her standing there beside him.

“Tisiphone.” she says, before he has the opportunity to ask. He knows that Tisiphone is one of the Furies, and the scourge of murderers. It’s almost cute that she thinks that will discourage him.

“Tisiphone,” he accepts, “how lovely to see you again so soon.” Looking at her now, Tom doesn’t know how his daft, eleven-year-old self ever imagined her plain. Her wild curls drip around her shoulders, and the green light of the fire gives her an otherworldly emerald glow. The skin at her throat is so gossamer-fine that he can see her pulse twitching and, when he pays attention, the same is true of her wrists. Her white dress clings softly to her frame, and he can see the slender waist and the faint curve of her hips. Her dainty feet and slim arms are always bare.

“I wish I could say the same.” she says, and she sounds almost bleak. Perhaps she has finally given up on swaying him from his course. “Patricide is a bad crime, Tom. They all are, really, but your own flesh and blood?” Tom casts a few privacy charms to prevent anyone from disturbing them, lest one of his housemates should wake.

“He was no flesh and blood of mine. He denied me to the moment that he took his last, insignificant breath.”

“There’s an old saying that you can’t choose your family.”

“He deserved what he got.”

“He _deserved_ it, did he?” she makes a non-committal humming sound. “You must be terrified of what will happen if someone ever decides to give _you_ what you deserve.”

Tom’s mouth curves into a smile. “Someone is welcome to try, if they wish. We both know that, no matter what they did, I’d come back.”

“So,” she says, after a long pause, “you’ve finally achieved one of your great objectives.”

“I have.” he says with satisfaction. “Although, there’s more that I want.”

“I can guess very well at what you _want_.” she mutters, looking pointedly at the tent in his lap. Tom really can’t help it—even the _thought_ of her is often enough to get him hard, these days.

“And you still intend to deny me?” he asks. There is always a chance, after all, that she might have changed her mind. She tilts her head as if she is considering, and eventually comes closer, perching on the arm of his chair. Tom’s fingers, without his conscious permission, stray to the material of her skirt.

“That depends.”

Tom’s pulse speeds slightly, and he swallows, not wanting to seem too overeager. “Depends on what?”

“You want something from me, Tom. Something precious.”

“Sex?” he asks, just to be sure that they’re on the same page.

“Yes, sex, but something else too. You see, if I’m to fuck you,” it’s such a _coarse_ word from her, and it makes a little thrill dance down his spine, “I’ll also have to give you my virginity.”

Tom takes a shaky breath. It is more than he’d ever imagined. He wants her, of course, but he always _assumed_ that she would have taken other lovers in the past. Given all her knowledge, and her ageless body, he figured he would just be another in a long list (though, with his advances towards immortality, he had certainly envisaged being the _last_ on that list). The fact that he could be her _first_ was an idea that he had never even entertained. She will be _his_ , entirely his. His cock will be the first to enter her, he will change her body permanently and tangibly and, once he has her, he never plans to let her go.

“I’m not opposed.” he says, when he realises that she is waiting on his reply. She actually snorts at that.

“I’m sure you’re not. The fact remains, Tom, that you want me to give you something special. I’m willing to consider it, but I want _you_ to give _me_ something special in return.”

This is familiar territory: reciprocity. They have made bargains before, like that night on the Astronomy tower, and Tom isn’t surprised that she wants to propose a trade. It’s only reasonable, and there is very little Tom wouldn’t do to ensure that he is her first and only.

“What do you propose?” he wants her, yes, but he’s not so incautious as to offer her the verbal equivalent of a blank cheque. She smiles, viridian in the firelight.

“I want your diary.”

Tom stiffens—his whole body, this time, not just his cock—at the word.

“You know what it is.” he says, and she nods.

“I do, and that’s why it’s a fair exchange. Virginity may be a stupid, patriarchal concept,” she sounds ridiculously annoyed, and he almost laughs at her strange notions, “but it has its own value. So I want something of equal value.”

“You’ll be taking _my_ virginity, too.” he offers vaguely, not really imagining that she’ll think that a fair swap. She laughs at him.

“There’s no equivalence there: you don’t care a whit for your virginity, and it’s not like I’ll be changing anything permanent about your body.”

“The diary contains a piece of my soul.”

“If I give myself to you, you’ll own a piece of me that nobody else can ever have.” she’s right, and he wants that piece so _very_ badly, which he’s sure she knows. “I want a piece of you as recompense. Fair, Tom, is fair.”

“Can I have some time to think about it?” he asks, after a brief pause for thought. While he initially revolted against the idea, he’s already reconsidering. She can’t have the diary _yet_ , but perhaps she can in the future. Once he’s spoken to Slughorn, he’ll know whether or not it’s safe to proceed with additional Horcruxes. If it is, and if he makes the ring into his second, then he can’t see that there’s any particular harm in allowing her to take the diary. Besides, it’s not as if she’s ever attempted to harm him—in fact, she’d been vehemently against the idea of his splitting his soul in the first place—so there’s no reason to think she’d damage the diary’s soul fragment.

“I don’t see why not.” she says. “I’ll give you three months to decide.”

She straightens up, as if she is preparing to stand, and Tom presses his hand to her thigh, holding her in place on the arm of the chair. She raises her eyebrows at him, clearly sensing that he’s not finished.

“You understand what you’re asking?” he says.

“I do.”

“Given the… _magnitude_ of what you want from me, I think I ought to know what it is that I’m trading for. You know _exactly_ what the diary is, and what its significance is, but I don’t know anything about sex. I don’t know if it will be good or not, or whether I’ll enjoy it or not.”

“ _That_ ,” she indicates his groin with a nod, “suggests that you will.”

“But I don’t _know_.”

“So you want…what? A _down payment_?” he’s pleased at how quickly she’s caught on. He’s heard his dorm-mates talking about the possibilities, about the things he can ask her to do that won’t put her virginity at risk, and he’s _desperately_ curious.

“Something like that, yes.”

“Another kiss?” she guesses, and he shakes his head. “Do you want me to use my hands?” while Tom wouldn’t be averse, he has something else in mind. “I think you’d better tell me, Tom.”

“I want you to-” Tom is momentarily lost for words; it seems crass to articulate what it is that he’s asking for “-I would like you to use your mouth.” his hand clenches involuntarily on her leg as he says it, and she looks down at him knowingly.

“You like the idea of that, don’t you? Me sucking your cock, on my knees before you like a supplicant.” Tom’s eyelids flutter at the picture she describes, and his voice, when he mutters an affirmative, is rough as gravel. She keeps her eyes fixed on him as she slides from the arm of the chair to the floor, resting her hands on his knees as she kneels facing him. Her hands move to his fly, grazing him through the material of his pants, and he jumps at the contact. “I don’t want you to imagine that you’ve somehow tricked me into this, Tom. I will do this for you, but don’t forget that the only reason I’m doing it is because _I_ want to, not because _you_ want me to.”

If she’s trying to cool his desire, she’s going about it the wrong way. The knowledge that she’s doing this because _she_ wants it is almost enough to make Tom come in his trousers. Her fine hands go to his belt, jerking the buckle undone and sliding the leather free of its loops with a soft hiss. She undoes the button with a twist of her thumb, and drags the zip down so slowly that he can hardly stand it.

Tom is grateful that he typically forgoes underwear. There is nothing to impede his cock as it rises from his trousers, standing straight even without support. She shoves his knees apart and settles herself between them. It is light enough that he can see all the details of her face, down to the faint freckles over her nose, but also dim enough that she is brilliantly silhouetted by the fire behind her. Slowly, and keeping her wide-open eyes on his the entire time, she places a gentle kiss on the head of his dick. She teases him like that for several minutes, as his fingers dig into the leather of his armchair, before she pauses, her breath washing over his shiny, exposed tip.

“Is this as you’d hoped it would be, _My Lord_?” even the scorn in her voice can’t diminish the pleasure of hearing his self-determined honorific from her lips. Only his followers ever use it, and only ever in private, and to hear it like _this_ , from _her_ …Tom had never believed that two words could bring him such a degree of physical pleasure. That pleasure skyrockets as she opens her mouth and lowers it onto his cock.

It is better than Tom has ever allowed himself to imagine. Her mouth is so hot and so wet, her tongue so deft as it plays along his shaft, that he has to close his eyes to endure the onslaught of sensation. The breath from her nostrils stirs his pubic hair as she slides up and down, and her soft sighs and hums are as unbearably erotic as the sight of her on the floor between his knees.

It isn’t long before his breathing has transitioned to a ragged pant. He has forfeited his grip on the arms of his chair to twist his fingers through her hair instead, cradling her head almost tenderly as she moves. At some point, she has brought her hands into play, and one of them is wrapped around the base of him, squeezing just firmly enough that he’s constantly aware of it. His cock is slippery with her saliva, and the muscles in his thighs and stomach keep twitching pre-emptively. He has been biting the inside of his cheek ferociously to keep from coming too soon, but even so, he can sense he’s getting close.

She pulls off him, breathing hard, a shining strand of saliva curving gently between her mouth and his cock, connecting them. He is reminded of that silver cord she sometimes carries. “Use me, Tom.” she sounds almost as winded as Tom feels. “Use my mouth to make yourself come.”

He twitches at the instruction, and tightens his grip on her hair. Hesitantly, at first—he doesn’t want her to change her mind about their prospective deal—he starts to jerk his hips lightly, pulling her onto his cock at the same time. In short order, he is _fucking her mouth_ , a thought that makes every shred of tissue in his body tighten pleasurably. Her hands are digging into his thighs, and she is gasping, almost sobbing, around him, but she makes no move to stop him. Her golden eyes, shining with unshed tears at the strain to her jaw and throat, never leave his face. That is how Tom comes: pushing her mouth onto him, thrusting _deeply_ into her body, with their eyes locked on one another. His balls tighten and his cock twitches repeatedly within the confines of her mouth, and he chokes out something that _could_ be a garbled version of her name, but could equally be some incoherent sound of satisfaction. When she finally sits back, leaving him limp and panting in his chair, he sees that she is trembling, and her knees almost give way as she climbs to her feet.

“Tisiphone,” he chokes out, struggling to find his voice, “stay. Let me-” he gestures vaguely at her groin, hoping to convey his willingness to reciprocate, but she gives him an unsteady smile and shakes her head.

“No. Three months, Tom. I’ll see you in three months, and I expect a decision.” she vanishes before he can reply.


	10. Aphrodite

The decision, in the end, is a simple one. If Tom had not been largely decided before she even managed to leave him in the Common Room, then he certainly would have been as soon as he’d consulted with Slughorn. While the Professor was obviously horrified by the mere _thought_ of someone making _any_ (let alone multiple) Horcruxes, there was no underlying theoretical problem. Slughorn’s objections were purely moral.

Tom uses his father’s death to turn the Gaunt ring into a Horcrux, and is enormously pleased in the aftermath. He can discern no difference in himself—the ritual doesn’t appear to have caused him any damage, beyond the expected tear in his soul—and he is now doubly protected against the risk of death. If he can make _two_ Horcruxes, then he can see no particular reason why he can’t make _more_ , and he is toying with the idea of seven. Seven, after all, is a powerfully magical number.

With a second Horcrux safely in his grasp, and more on the cards, he is willing to trade his first in whatever devil’s bargain _she_ fancies they are making.

It is almost exactly three months before she next arrives. Tom keeps half an eye on the date, never quite counting down the days, but always aware that they are passing. He’s in the Room of Requirement (his preferred space, given the risks associated with entering the Chamber again while he’s still at school), reading and thinking and taking notes, when she sinks onto the sofa that has just appeared opposite the one where he is sitting. Tom’s blood begins to thrum in his veins; his body primed for what _he_ knows is coming. He wonders if she, with her knowledge of the future, also knows, or whether this is a decision that remains a mystery to her.

“Tom.” she greets him. “I’m here for your decision.”

“I agree.” he tells her. There is a beat of silence.

“You agree?”

“Yes. You let me fuck you,” there is a certain kick to be derived from directing such a carnal word towards a lady, “and I’ll give you my diary.”

“No, Tom,” she says, and he is momentarily infuriated by the fact that she imagines she can change the terms, “you give me your diary, and _then_ I’ll let you have me.”

“What guarantee do I have that you won’t just disappear?”

“What guarantee do _I_ have that you won’t refuse to hand it over after we’ve slept together?”

It’s a predictable impasse, and neither of them wants to give ground. Nonetheless, when she points out that _he_ is the remorseless multiple-murderer with the defaced soul, and therefore the less trustworthy of the two of them, it’s difficult for Tom to disagree. He pulls the diary out of his bag. He has wrapped it neatly in brown paper—it is a gift, after all—and inscribed her name on it.

“Aphrodite?” she asks him, curiously, as she pulls the paper off to inspect her prize. She examines it briefly, pauses almost as if she is _listening_ to it, and then makes it disappear with a flick of her fingers. Tom tries not to think too much about its sudden absence. “I haven’t told you, yet, what name I’m using tonight.”

“Tonight,” he murmurs, approaching until he stands only inches in front of her, “you’re mine, and I’ve determined that you’re Aphrodite.”

“Aphrodite, then.” she says, and for the first time in their long association, he thinks that she looks _nervous_ , like a frightened deer that might leap away at any moment. He raises his hand slowly, tracing his fingers across the sharp ridges of her clavicle until they reach the smooth white material of her gown: a simple, scooped-neck arrangement that hangs from her shoulders. Tom slips his fingers under the fabric—a sumptuous bed pops into existence, courtesy of the Room of Requirement, but they are both too distracted to notice—replicating the motion on the opposite side.

“May I?” he asks, quietly. He wants her _compliance_ , but he wants more than that, too. She nods, and he sees her slim throat bob as she swallows hard. Without more words, he guides the silky material down over her shoulders, watching it skim her frame as it drops to the floor in a pale puddle.

She’s the first naked woman Tom’s ever seen, outside of books, and she is _exquisite_. While she tends to thinness, that only emphasises the beautiful fragility of her body, the flimsiness that makes him want to _squeeze_ until she shatters in his hold. Her breasts are small and her hips are somewhat narrow—Malfoy wouldn’t like her at all—but her shallow curves are smooth, feminine, and harmonious. A triangle of short, dark curls conceals her cunt from his gaze, but Tom can wait. That, too, will soon be his.

The most striking thing about her physical appearance is the mesmerising scar that bisects her torso. It runs almost from her hip to her shoulder, drawing a line between her breasts, and is obviously the mark of some terrible curse. At the centre, almost level with her nipples, it is a starburst of vibrant purple, which fades to lilac, and then to silver, towards the injury’s outer edges. The scar tissue is smooth and pearlescent, and he can hardly wait to run his hands and tongue across it.

“We can glamour it, if it bothers you.” she has clearly noticed the direction of his gaze, but Tom shakes his head vehemently.

“No.” he says. “You’re so beautiful.”

“You didn’t think so, once.” she reminds him, and Tom is embarrassed by the memory.

“I do now.” taking her hands in his, he leads her to the bed. The covers, he notices in some remote corner of his mind, are amber gold and match her eyes. “Lie down.” he tells her, and for what is possibly the first time ever, she does as he asks, reclining atop the shimmering bedspread. “Spread your legs.” he says, and she tenses up at that, raising her head to look at him accusingly. “Please.”

After a bit more hesitation, she does, and after another hesitation she spreads them wider. Tom looks at the soft, pink folds of her cunt: they look plush, like velvet, and they’re already glistening. He is fascinated, but also wary of making a fool of himself. “Will you touch yourself for me?” he asks, and his voice is so low and rough that he can barely recognise it. “Show me what feels good for you?”

She is quivering, and she has to close her eyes, but she does it. She slides her hands down her body, stroking her sides and cupping her breasts, circling her nipples with her fingers, before reaching the junction of her legs. Once she’s there, she skims her hands along the skin of her upper thighs, moving closer and closer to her cunt until she drags her fingers the length of the damp folds. Breathing irregularly, she slips her middle finger up and down, parting the halves so that he can see the darkness of her tiny opening. While he obviously knows that it’s physically possible, he is stunned by the thought that his cock will actually _fit_ , and has to choke back a gasp at the thought of how much she will need to _stretch_ to take him.

Her finger keeps gathering the wetness from her opening and spreading it more widely, distributing it over her folds and circling her clit until her entire cunt is slick and gleaming, as if it’s been oiled. Her breath keeps hitching, and her hips are making vague, circular motions against the mattress. “Stop!” Tom chokes out, and she does. “Are you ready?” she nods, frantically, tousling her curls against the pillows.

Tom is still consumed by the memory of her pleasuring him with her mouth, and frequently revisits it late at night, or in the shower. He has yearned to know what she might taste like and, taking advantage of her closed eyes and general air of distraction, drops to his stomach and licks her broadly. She shudders violently, eyes starting open and face flushing brilliantly red as she looks down at him, and instinctively brings her knees together. Tom grabs her legs to keep them apart.

“What are you doing?” her voice is just a squeak, and Tom drops his mouth back to her. She tastes better than he’d expected. Tart, but clean, with an edge of muskiness. Ignoring her question, he uses his tongue to imitate what she’d been doing with her fingers: pressing it inside her to gather her wetness, then dragging that wetness across the rest of her until he can practically feel her clit pulsing. She is rigidly tense beneath him, and keeps arching her hips up to press her sex closer to his mouth. Guiding a finger up and down her slippery folds, Tom saturates it thoroughly before pushing it inside her, making her cry out. He pumps that finger back and forth, watching the way she clings to the digit and alternating his moments of observation with licks and kisses. As he pumps harder, his finger and her soaking folds combine to produce loud, lubricious noises that obviously mortify her. Tom couldn’t care less—he elicits as many as he can and, whenever she looks close to objecting, swallows them to distract her.

When he plunges a second finger into her (it stretches her opening, even though his fingers aren’t overly thick) and sucks on her clit simultaneously, she screams and convulses. Her body bucks wildly against his hand, and only his free arm, braced across her hips, prevents her from breaking his nose with her pelvis. She writhes and quivers and twists the sheets in her fists, and is practically flooded with arousal, some of which trickles down between the cheeks of her arse. It takes her several minutes for her to calm down, and when Tom pulls his fingers free of her body, they are sticky with the evidence of her pleasure. He scissors them briefly, watching the viscosity stretch and slide, before sucking them clean. She opens her eyes just in time to see it, flushes even redder than she already is, and promptly closes them again.

Tom crawls over her body, his cock thick and hard between them, and positions himself at her entrance. She opens her eyes again at that, and her pupils are wide and black as she looks up at him. He pushes forward, looking down to see his length splitting her open. She is soaking wet with a mixture of her come and his saliva, but still _so_ tight that he trembles with the effort of going slowly. Her fingers dig into his hips as she gives a soft whimper of discomfort, spreading her legs and angling her groin in an effort to open herself to him even further. He withdraws slowly, and they repeat the process several times, until he feels her begin to roll against him, matching his movements with her own.

Sex is shockingly instinctive, and they quickly settle into a rhythm. Her hands are wound around the back of Tom’s neck as he thrusts, and he can only just support himself on his arms to stop all his weight from resting on her. It is sweaty and ardent and deliriously good. When he comes, he comes with a shout, shoving his hips even harder against hers and staying there, rigid and shivering, as he empties himself into her.

Tom has her three times that night, and he is grateful that he’s still young, that he can _recover_ quickly enough for the additional rounds. The second time he stands, spreading her on the bed before him so that he can see _everything_ : her breasts bouncing with his plunging movements; her cunt stretched wide around him, with the wet, puffy lips clinging to his length as he pushes them repeatedly in and out; her exposed throat as she throws her head back on the mattress, messing her curls into a frightful snarl. The third time, it might be more correct to say that _she_ has _Tom_. He sits against the headboard in a pile of covers and cushions while she lowers herself onto him, mouth dropping open in pleasure as her (likely bruised) body strains to accommodate him. They are nose to nose and chest to chest as she grinds and rocks against him, and he touches her all over—palms her breasts, tangles his fingers in her hair, kisses her heatedly—until she climaxes. He comes shortly afterwards, and he is so spent by then, so unguarded and sated, that he moans weakly into her shoulder. “Aphrodite,” he feels himself pulsing inside her, and he could easily lapse into unconsciousness, “my Aphrodite.”

When they finally collapse back to the bed, he reaches sleepily for his wand, intending to tidy them up with a few quick charms. He is surprised when she stops him with a hand on his wrist. “Leave it.” she whispers, cheeks glowing under his confused, sleepy scrutiny. “I…like to feel you there.” Tom groans at the words and demands to see, and she parts her legs for him, allowing him to appreciate their mingled come slowly seeping out of her. Dropping onto the mattress, Tom pulls her closer to him and settles into a deeply-sated doze.

When he comes to, she is gone.


	11. Atropos

It is two years before Tom sees her again: almost the longest she has spent away from him in all the time he has known her. He thinks about her often—he hesitates to say _obsessively_ —and wonders where she is and what she’s doing. Despite countless offers, he declines any female company that isn’t strictly business-related.

He’s working at Borgin and Burke’s, and living in a dingy little flat off Knockturn Alley, which is the best he can afford without relying upon the charity of his followers (a low to which he refuses to stoop). There was general shock and horror when he accepted a position as a shop boy, particularly when most of his professors had earmarked him as the next (and youngster ever) Minister, but Tom has his own reasons. At Borgin and Burke’s, he has the opportunity to handle all sorts of interesting artefacts that pass over the counter every day. He cultivates relationships with wealthy, influential people who never pause to suspect that a humble shop boy will ever pose a threat, and at the back of his mind, he is constantly looking for items worthy of becoming Horcruxes. Tom thinks he’d _feel_ it, if something were to happen to one of his Horcruxes, so he believes that the diary is still safe and undamaged. The ring, of course, he _knows_ is safe: he wears it all the time.

It is the thirty-first of July, an unremarkable summer date, and the weather is unexceptional. It’s late in the evening, and Tom is in his flat. He’s been reading a particularly shady Dark Arts volume, borrowed from the shop, and is halfway through a Firewhiskey. While he’s not generally one for drinking, the book is sinister enough to emanate cold, the way that dark books and objects often do, and the heat of the whiskey keeps that at bay. He doesn’t really _mind_ the cold—is too well-versed in the Dark Arts to be properly bothered by it—but such things can, if allowed to settle, leave a residue. That residue, in turn, can make it difficult to properly charm clients. Even if they don’t know precisely what the problem is, they can sense that _something_ is amiss, and draw all their unwitting protective measures more closely about themselves. It makes them tighter with their money, less susceptible to charm, more suspicious, and less likely to part with their objects, so Tom avoids it wherever possible.

He has just closed the book, finished with it for the evening, when he sees her sitting on his sofa. She has her silver rope with her again. It’s been years since he’s seen it, but he knows it’s grown substantially longer. It extends all the way from one wrist to the other, winding up her arms and curving around the nape of her neck. The rope seems to emit a soft, silvery light of its own, and he can just see the faint luminescence playing across her skin. She has a small, ornate set of scissors in one hand, and they have the same sort of ominous energy as the tape measure she had carried once before. He wonders if her _project_ is something to do with sewing. Whatever it is, he’s fairly certain it’s at least half (and possibly entirely) dark. More proof of the fact that she is perfect for him.

“You were gone a long time.” it’s not much of a greeting, but it’s a weight that has pressed on his mind constantly for almost two years.

“I was working on my-”

“Your project, I know.” Tom tries to tamp down his resentment. “Why are you here?” he hasn’t done anything particularly terrible that might have summoned her, it’s not his birthday, and they’ve no bargain in place that requires her presence, so he’s curious.

“I wanted to be with you.” she says, and the words have the quality of a confession. Tom’s heart skips a beat. He reaches for the Firewhiskey and summons a second tumbler, pouring her a drink and sliding it across the table. She conjures a phial from nowhere, and her expression is positively wicked as she holds it up in front of him.

“Care for a little something extra?”

“No, thank you.” Tom hasn’t made it this far by being stupidly careless. While she’s never attempted to harm him, he’s not going to just _drink_ whatever is in that phial, particularly not when he can feel the cool, disturbing energy emanating from her scissors. He senses that he needs his wits about him. She empties the phial into her Firewhiskey with a shrug, pouting, and Tom chuckles lowly.

“I’ve finished.” she tells him, and he is momentarily confused. She hasn’t even tasted the Firewhiskey, let alone finished it. “My project.” she elaborates, and Tom’s heartrate speeds up just a fraction.

“Congratulations.” he says huskily, suddenly breathless in the face of the possibilities. Does this mean that there’s nothing to call her away? “I’m pleased for you.”

“No, you’re not.” she whispers. “Or at any rate, you’re only pleased for me insofar as you’re pleased for _yourself_. You’re pleased to think that now, after all this time, there’s nothing to distract me from you.”

Tom won’t insult her by pretending that she’s wrong. “Can you stay, then?”

“I plan to stay with you for the rest of your life, Tom Riddle.” Tom swallows painfully, every tiny facet of his being suddenly incandescent. For years, it’s all he’s wanted: immortality, with her at his side.

“Will you?”

“Ask me nicely.” she says, like she did on the Astronomy tower almost half a decade earlier.

“I can’t.” he sounds almost sorrowful. “I don’t know your name.”

She has unwound her silver cord from her arms, and is twirling one end of it idly while she spins the scissors in her other hand.

“Atropos.”

The hairs on the back of Tom’s neck prickle, but he shrugs off the sensation. She has always enjoyed trying to menace him with her curious little pseudonyms. If she wants Atropos, she can have it—provided she is his, _forever_ , he doesn’t really care.

“The Fate who cuts the thread of life.” he observes quietly. “Ironic, don’t you think, given that we’ll never die?”

“Care to test that theory, Tom?” she asks, and before Tom can move to stop her, she pulls her silvery rope taut across the blade of her scissors, and cuts.

Atropos falls to her knees before him, all the colour bleeding from her face. She only just manages to place her Firewhiskey on the carpet before collapsing to her hands and knees. Tom flings himself after her, dropping to his knees beside her and reaching for her desperately. A terrible pain lances through his chest, knocking the breath out of him, and he wonders if this is _love_ , and if that’s why it hurts so badly.

“Why?” he cradles her in his arms, curling around the agonizing pangs in his own chest as he tries to support her. She clasps his left hand with desperate, wild-eyed energy.

“Retribution, Tom.” the words are quiet, but laced with vicious elation. “I wanted you to suffer, the way that your father suffered, the way that Myrtle suffered, the way that Harry suffered.”

“So you’ve killed _yourself_ to punish me?” Tom is incredulous. It is so far beyond the realms of anything that he could have imagined that he can scarcely comprehend it, and he doesn’t even know who Harry is. Her hand drops from his—she must be too weak to hold it up—and her head lolls against his shoulder. She makes a faint, choking sound, and he realises, belatedly, that she’s _laughing_. Searing agony laces through his arms and legs, and he buckles beneath her slight weight, slumping to the floor.

“I should have been dead years ago, Tom.” she whispers, gazing into his eyes. “It’s been so hard. I’ve only been able to avoid him,” he understands instinctively that she means _Death_ , “using his own cloak of invisibility.”

“I can save you.” the offer is impulsive—he’ll be flat out saving _himself_ , Horcrux or no—but he cannot stand the thought of losing her.

“You have.” she chokes out. “You’re _my_ Horcrux, Tom. You’ve kept me tethered here, all these years. I can’t exist independent of you.”

“Then why are you dying?” he is weeping, he notices, but the pain is so comprehensive and all-consuming that he can’t pinpoint the exact source of his tears.

“That wasn’t _my_ thread, Tom. It was yours.”

Tom’s vision is hazy, and it’s a struggle to focus on her beautiful, familiar face. “What?” he asks, his increasingly sluggish mind trying to put the pieces together.

“Memories, Tom. When we die, what’s left of us but memories? I wove them all together, but they still weren’t _you_ , so I took your hair, and then your blood, and then your semen, but it _still_ wasn’t enough. Not until I added the soul fragment. Getting it out of that diary nearly killed me.”

Cold is creeping up Tom’s limbs, making his hands numb, but he remembers his ring. _This_ body might die, but _he_ will live. He still has the ring. He will come back. He thinks he ought to take it off, to fling it across the room, out of harm’s way, but when his watery vision fixes on his hand, the ring is gone.

“My ring?” his voice is breathless and weak.

“Basilisk venom.” with what remains of her strength, she indicates her abandoned Firewhiskey. Tom can just see that the surface is boiling frantically. “Very,” her breath shudders fiercely, “effective against Horcruxes.”

Tom has no choice but to allow her body to slide to the floor. He no longer has the strength to support her weight. Even so, as she lies in his arms, he feels that she belongs there.

“Who are you?” it’s one of few thoughts that hold together in his increasingly disjointed mind. He senses, in a deep, terrible way, that it’s over. This is beyond his power to fix. She has been playing him from the very beginning—this fiendish, extraordinary creature—and she has won.

Her eyelids flutter, the gold of her irises strobed by the black fringe of her lashes, but she manages to meet his gaze. “I gave you so many chances, Tom,” tears trickle from her beautiful amber eyes, “I _wanted_ you to be better. I _warned_ you.”

He wants to tell her that he _knows_ , that he remembers every time he’s seen her, every word she’s ever said, but he’s too far gone. “Who are you?” he asks again, forcing the words out with a tongue that doesn’t want to move. It is the question that has defined their history, and he wants the answer more than ever. They are side by side on the floor, now. His arm is still under her, and their faces are turned to one another, the tips of their noses only inches apart. Her lips move slightly, as if she’s struggling with the word. She tries again, and he can just make it out.

“Hermione.” she says, and it _fits_ her, somehow. It’s almost funny that, after all her goddess monikers, her true name is something both classical and unusual. “Tom!” she gasps his name, and he can see terror in her face, but also the light of achievement. She came to destroy him, and she is pleased to have succeeded, even though her tears make it obvious that she derives no real happiness from his fate. He twitches beneath her—one of few movements he’s capable of making—and she rolls fractionally towards him. Her eyes fall closed and do not reopen.

Tom has just enough life left in him to shift forward and press his unfeeling lips to hers. Their tears mingle on her skin and roll slowly to the carpet. Tom’s throes of torment have lapsed into a numb, frozen nothingness, and he wonders whether there will be anything _after_ , and whether _she_ will be there.

“Hermione.” he whispers, and he, too, is gone.


End file.
